The man with a whistle

The story revolves around an old man and his son having great ambition with a touch of social criticism of the city of Karachi, Pakistan. Touched and inspired by a real event.

 

It was a time when people were not aware of the target killings and the suicidal bombs in the streets. Karachi was the city of lights in real. Children didn’t know that who so ever was Mahajir or Punjabi, Sindhi or Pukhtoon. That was the time when the kids grow up watching plays like ainak wala jin and andhera ujala. When Waheed Muraad was the chocolate hero of Pakistani film industry and Muhammad Ali and Nadeem were there for sentimental characters. Voices of Noor Jahan and Nayyara noor with Ghulam Ali and Mehdi Hassan could come out like a soft whispers hitting directly to the hearts of many just like me. What a time it was! But time changes and it flies faster than anything else. I recall that time as the best time I ever had in my entire life. When the flowers in the garden seems like the stars on the sky. Stars one cannot just see or wish but to have in one’s hand. It’s merely forty years but NO… The time turned cruel when I lost my maternal relatives in Bengal during these years. Well, I lost so many of them and so many later on, what matters? Nothing matters at all because I still have a son, Najam with me. It was a full moon night when the brightest star of my life stopped shining but left me with the star more beautiful and with full of sparks. It was a horrible night and the sweetest of all the times.

I was returning back to my quarter from the school. It was a bright sunny day and the sun was ever ready to embrace its beloveds from everywhere. I was passing through the bazars full of people of liars lying to get the market profits. There were some teenagers who were checking out girls passing by. Some were veiled, some were not. Some were not of their age. What a teenage fun it was to do such pity things, I thought. I hated such place where there was so much noise and rush. The streets were not less than a fish market but this was the only shortest way known to me to reach my home where I and Najam lived all alone. After spending fifteen years as an athlete in Army, I got retired and appointed as a physical training instructor in a government school. These streets were the place where my son played, teasing every shopkeeper he crossed. Soon he will be doing his bachelors and will be appointed on some good job somewhere.

Back in home, there was no sugar to make tea. So, I preferred to take my tea without it. I switched on the television which gave an abrupt image and pathetic graphics with not more than two stations. I felt blessed as it was showing news today. There was some talk show going on in which there were men talking, wearing a suit or a dress I always wanted to have for Najam. It was a bilingual show that cannot be understood as I just learn Yes and NO with the exceptions of counting till hundred and a teaspoon of words in that FARANGI language. But then I came to know a bit that they were using word, Karachi again and again. Actually they were talking to resolve the terror in the city which was once the city of lights and now in deep darks.

‘What a bullshit? How is he going to know what our bazaar looks like? How can they ask or order the people to throw the chewed Paan in the bins and not on the ways of noble men? How can they stop those teenagers doing one wheeling on Shahraa-e-Faisal and Sadar? They can’t do a thing? This can’t make any difference…….’

‘Abba! You are getting old, talking to yourself.’

I saw Najam holding his book in his hand and a shopping bag having half kg of sugar in the other, smiling.

‘Najam, my son. You came back. I was expecting you and which book you are holding. It seems not of this planet’. I grinned.

‘It’s for the CSS exams Abba! I wanted to be an officer.’ He said with a strange pride like he didn’t just call himself an officer but he was an officer in real.

‘Son, I worked with officers. Some were nicer to me more than anyone else but some were like torturing curses. I’m proud of you that you wants to be an officer but don’t forget that you are still having a soldier standing at the back of you not with the riffle but with lots of prayers. Remember that you won’t be like these we see on the screen’. I ensured and he came closer to have a kiss on his forehead.  ‘Live Long, Son’.

It was the day when I wanted to go to the bazar nearby and to say everyone there that, ‘See, my son will be an officer.’

He worked day and night, not for weeks but months. My eyes were shining with pride and my belief of seeing him as a CSP became stronger and stronger. It was again a bright day when I came back on a short leave for my son as that was the day of his result of bachelors. I got the sweets freshly prepared from suhgaat e sheereen, the finest place for such stuff on such a beautiful occasions. While I was returning back in a public transport, I started running through the nearby bazaar streets, the same very street which has a big, double road at the end. But traffic was stopped because of some white collared personal. ‘Perhaps some big person he is’,

 I thought with sadness. And then, I saw Najam crossing the road where there was no traffic.

‘What the devil are you doing, NAJAM!’ I shouted but how could he listen. He couldn’t listen to me….. Could he? There was a blind man crossing the road holding the walking stick and his lips were saying something that couldn’t be heard by anyone else. More than eight cars came and crossed like they were flying on the roads. There was nothing but the shrieks and cries of some people at the traffic signal. I called Najam, from the peak of my noise but he didn’t reply.

I could not see the crowd gathering there, I could not hear the shrieks anymore. I could just see the darkness. Darkness in my life. Perhaps, within a factor of second it took and people gathered around the injured blind man who was still holding a hand…… Just a hand, a bodiless hand with the electroplated gold wrist watch of his grandfather. I didn’t have anything to say but a whistle, to have. I started to blow my whistle to make my way and I kept on blowing the whistle till someone tried to take it out from my mouth. I have seen my beautiful son with full of blood.

Three hours later there was his teacher who showed up on my door and said,

‘Congratulations PTI saab, your son toped the BA exams overall. Aren’t you going to take a sweet for us? I still having whistle around my neck in my red track suit, I took his hand and showed him the dead body and said with extreme grief,

‘Sweetness was crushed today’.

Days later, there was a news that case was reported for the accident of Najam Sarfaraz, a boy of twenty who topped the BA exams, an extremely hard working boy who wanted to appear in the coming CSS exams…… ‘Indeed, this nation is proud of such students as his teacher said……..’

All voices turned mute.

‘What they know? What are the sufferings? Nothing matters, nothing matters to them at all.’

I wanted Najam to reappear and say to me that,

‘Abba you are getting old. You are talking to yourself.’

But miracles do not happen. Not in the world, I belonged.

‘My only star gone and I’m left with nothing.’

And then there was him, blowing whistle. Not once, not twice or thrice but till the time he could breathe and he didn’t have much to blow, see, speak, hear, suffer or loss.

The man with the whistle breathed his last.      

Author's Note

PTI saab : Physical Training instructor
ainak wala jin and andhera ujala: Pakistani serials
Ghulam Ali and Mehdi Hassan: Pakistani Classical Singers